Trump has repeatedly said he would disavow white supremacist groups like the KKK and the neo-Nazis, but he still hasn t done so. Is there a reason why he won t disavow them? Or is he just not good at it?
00:00:00.000Hey everybody come on in, come on in gather round. It's time for a coffee with Scott Adams,
00:00:16.560best part of the day. Is it good? Oh it's good. You want to see what it looks like out my window?
00:00:23.160Total whiteout conditions, that is unhealthy air quality right there. Forest fires still
00:00:34.320putting a lot of smoke into my neighborhood. They're not very close to me but there are
00:00:39.420so many fires that I can't go outside. But we don't need to go outside yet. What we need is
00:00:49.920a simultaneous sip. And it doesn't take much to enjoy it. Not really. All you need is a cup or mug or a glass of tank or chalice or stein, a canteen drink or flask or vessel of any kind.
00:00:59.920Interestingly my traffic is very small today. Something's going on. And you should fill that
00:01:11.720vessel with coffee. Or your favorite beverage. And join me for the dopamine hit of the day. The thing that makes everything better. Simultaneous sip. Happening right now. Go.
00:01:26.720Ah. Well, I think that cleared the air quality a little bit. I'll probably have to drink some more to fix it entirely.
00:01:37.720All right. Let's talk about all the things. The big mystery of the day is, now this is interesting. My traffic is roughly half of what it was yesterday. I wonder why that is. Is there something going on today?
00:01:59.580Your Twitter is down? Twitter isn't working? Somebody's saying? Oh, it could be that the automatic notification didn't go up on Twitter. That's what it was. No notification. All right. Well, let us enjoy those of us who are here.
00:02:20.640All right. One of the big questions is, what's up with President Trump not forcefully disavowing the racist groups? With emphasis on the word forcefully, because he actually did say he would disavow them. He's disavowed them in the past multiple times. But when asked in the debate, as you all know, he did not.
00:02:46.080So Periscope didn't post to Twitter. Okay. So it looks like there's some kind of issue going on. But here's a hypothesis I want to put out there.
00:03:03.080President Trump, and I think I wrote about this in Win Bigly. President Trump is very savvy about media stuff. Would you agree that he is one of the most experienced, maybe the most experienced media personality, you know, just about of all time?
00:03:22.980You know, who has been interviewed more times than President Trump? Not many people. And there's a trick that he would see coming that I would also see coming, because like him, I get interviewed a lot.
00:03:37.220And here's the trick. If somebody says to you, will you disavow X? And you think to yourself, well, that group that you mentioned, this group X, they're a bad group, I can easily disavow them.
00:03:54.360So let's say it was the KKK. How hard would it be to disavow the KKK? Not hard. Not hard at all. Socially, socially acceptable. Easy to do. I disavow them.
00:04:09.220What would happen? What would be the next thing that would happen if the president disavowed the KKK, not in a speech that he's giving, this is important, but rather in a give and take scenario?
00:04:24.360Now, if he's giving a speech, he can just disavow all he wants, and he doesn't have to take questions if he doesn't want to. And he can get his message out there and say, yep, I disavowed the KKK, and then walk away. That's all good. No problem, right?
00:04:40.620But what if somebody asks him to disavow somebody? Well, there are two problems here. Number one, it looks weak when people force you to say stuff. Think about it.
00:04:53.580How do you look when somebody randomly can make you say stuff, literally make you say words? Okay, I'm going to make you say these words. I disavow whoever. And then you say the words. Who's in charge? Is it the person who repeated what they were told to repeat? Or is it the person who forced them to say it in public?
00:05:16.160It's a power thing. It's a power thing. So that's the first thing you need to know. The president seemingly never, I can't think of an exception, he never gives up the power position.
00:05:30.840And the power position is who's making somebody say something. It's not the person who's just conforming. So that's the first problem. It does look weak.
00:05:42.420Now, but you say to me, but Scott, yeah, I get what you're saying. You can't just say what other people tell you to say, that would look weak.
00:05:50.100But come on. Any fool can disavow a racist group, white supremacist. How hard is that? That's an exception. Clearly, you can do that. No problem at all. Right? No problem.
00:06:04.540What would happen if he had? Game it out. Now, this is the sort of thing you learn if you have media training, as I do.
00:06:15.860I literally have training with a real expert who sat with me and taught me how to deal with media interviews.
00:06:24.020The next thing that would happen is you'd get another question. Okay. Okay. So you've disavowed white supremacists.
00:06:32.640Very good. Very good. Do you also disavow the Proud Boys?
00:06:39.160Okay. Now it's getting a little harder, right? Because if you don't know exactly who the Proud Boys are,
00:06:46.160and I confess I didn't really know until this morning. You know, I've even been interviewed by
00:06:53.520Gavin McGinnis back in 2016. So I knew that there was something called the Proud Boys. I knew they existed.
00:06:59.800I've even communicated with some of them. People have messaged me on social media, etc.
00:07:05.020But I didn't know who they were or what they were. I vaguely knew that they, you know, were sort of
00:07:11.140like to fight or something and say politically incorrect things.
00:07:18.000But are they a white supremacist group? Well, they would say no. And you know what argument they would give
00:07:27.100for not being a white supremacist group? Well, that the black members of Proud Boys would be a pretty
00:07:34.280good argument that they're not a white supremacist group. Because it's hard to explain why the white
00:07:41.380supremacist group would have black members, but they do, and other ethnicities as well.
00:07:49.140But have they ever said something, let's say about Islam or about women? Have they ever said anything
00:07:57.260that the president would need to put some distance from? Probably yes. Probably yes. But he doesn't know
00:08:04.640exactly what they've said. So does he disavow them? Well, suppose he does. Let's say he does.
00:08:11.720So he disavows the Proud Boys. What's the next thing that'll happen? Do you disavow Breitbart?
00:08:22.400Breitbart, a publication that has been blamed by some people for saying things that, you know,
00:08:29.640other people have considered Islamophobic or racist or whatever. What does he do? He's already
00:08:36.840disavowed the easy one, white supremacy. And he, you know, hypothetically, let's say, he is sort of
00:08:46.100tentatively disavowed the Proud Boys, just in case. Don't know what's in there. Nobody's quite sure what
00:08:52.240they're about. I'm not entirely sure. But let's say he disavowed them. Now, what about Breitbart?
00:08:57.980Because lots of people on the left say bad things about Breitbart? Does he have to disavow them?
00:09:06.320Let's say he did. Now, it's not going to happen, right? In a million years, Trump would never disavow
00:09:12.220a publication that tends to be friendlier to him. But suppose he did. What happens next?
00:09:19.620Does he have to disavow Joe Rogan? Because remember, when Spotify took on Joe Rogan's program,
00:09:30.160they said, oh, there's several of these episodes we're going to have to delete, because they seem,
00:09:36.080you know, too friendly to white supremacists or whatever they said. Spotify's employees apparently
00:09:42.380are rebelling. So then what does he do? Does President Trump disavow Joe Rogan?
00:09:48.680Because they would be able to make an argument. I think it's a bullshit argument. But somebody
00:09:56.520could make an argument. Well, he associated with, by interviewing, McGinnis. There you go. He
00:10:05.460actually interviewed Gavin McGinnis. Joe Rogan interviewed me. What about me? Would President
00:10:13.160Trump have to disavow me? Because I've been on Joe Rogan's show? Joe Rogan talked to Gavin
00:10:21.320McGinnis. Gavin McGinnis was the founder of Proud Boys. Where does it stop? Now, even if you disagree
00:10:29.760with my examples that are imperfect, the point is, the moment you accept the frame that I'm going to
00:10:38.160make you say stuff, and you're going to have to keep saying stuff, because I'm going to keep giving
00:10:44.080you stuff to say. And the moment you say, I don't know if I want to keep saying the things that you're
00:10:50.340telling me to say, you're racist. It's over. Now, the president has taken the position, you've seen it
00:10:59.920for a long time, that he just doesn't like to get pushed around. It's not a good look. And he just
00:11:06.680prefers not to. So I think that when you saw the hesitation, the first time was when Jake Tapper
00:11:14.760asked the president to disavow David Duke in the KKK. And you saw the president hesitate. And he tried to
00:11:23.520get a sense of who else he would have to disavow. I think that was the source of the hesitation.
00:11:31.620Now, of course, I'm speculating, because I'm not inside his head. I can't know what he was thinking.
00:11:36.820But based on my own experience with media interviews, I would have seen that trap. So if
00:11:44.700I'd been asked that question, as I was answering it, and this is hard to do, it's hard to have a
00:11:50.360separate thought that's complicated while you're talking on camera to millions of people, right?
00:11:56.740It's very hard to do. So you're trying to process, okay, if I answer this question, what does that
00:12:02.100lead to? What's the question that naturally follows that? Am I setting a precedent? Am I walking into a
00:12:08.980trap? Is this one of those, do you still beat your spouse kind of questions? So I feel as if the
00:12:17.560president has found himself, you know, planning a couple of moves ahead, and not knowing where it
00:12:24.820would go. And I think that that cost him, because he would have been better off just going with it
00:12:30.200and then changing the subject. And like I said, there's a big difference between something he
00:12:35.640could say in the speech, because he can say everything he wants to say and nothing extra,
00:12:40.500and then just walk away. But when somebody is doing a back and forth, you know what the next
00:12:46.060question is going to be? They're going to extend this until they trap you.
00:12:53.360How about this as an answer? I often think about how to answer this, you know, if I'm the president,
00:13:00.800how would I answer it? And I think I might go something like this to avoid the trap. You know,
00:13:08.240do you disavow the KKK? Let's say that's the question. Here's an answer I'm playing with
00:13:14.420as a better way to go. Instead of disavowing people, disavow, let's say, opinions. So you could
00:13:25.540easily say, I disavow every racist viewpoint, no matter where it comes from. Then what does the
00:13:33.140interviewer say? So are you explicitly disavowing the KKK? And then the president could say,
00:13:40.460does the KKK have any racists in it? I'm disavowing all racism, no matter where it is. So, you know,
00:13:50.020if you want to make a list, ask yourself if there are any racists in there. Because if there's any
00:13:55.160racists in your list, I'm disavowing them. Well, are you specifically, can you say you're disavowing the
00:14:01.940KKK? Well, I've already put them on a terrorist, domestic terrorist list. So that's pretty disavowed,
00:14:10.620wouldn't you say? So Twitter's down, people are telling me. It's interesting. Periscope's up,
00:14:17.480but Twitter is down. It looks like people figured out that I'm broadcasting because the traffic is back
00:14:23.800up. Anyway, I think I'd go after the thought of racism and disavow that wherever it is.
00:14:34.800I saw that one of the Trump campaign websites had 33 false or misleading claims that Joe Biden
00:14:45.180allegedly made at the debates. 33 false or misleading claims. That's a lot of misleading claims, isn't
00:14:57.020it? 33 in an hour and a half. Now, here's my only point. Did President Trump say 33 false or misleading
00:15:08.740things? I don't know what the exact count is, but probably, right? But here's the thing. The people
00:15:17.120who most dislike President Trump, if you asked them one year ago, name what's the worst thing about
00:15:25.800Trump, they would probably say he lies. Wouldn't you agree? That would be the number one thing that
00:15:34.220would come out of people's mouth. At least that's my experience. Now, sometimes they'll go with
00:15:38.740the racism thing first, but I would say at least number two is going to be that he lies. He's
00:15:45.42020,000 lies. He lies, lies, lies, lies. But why don't they say that about Joe Biden? Does Joe Biden lie
00:15:53.880less than President Trump? I don't see any evidence of that. It looks like Joe Biden lies continuously,
00:16:02.480like just full-on, almost nothing but a wall of lies. Probably 70% lies to 30% truth, something like
00:16:12.220that. Now, why is it that we don't think of Biden as a liar? Now, some of you do if you're Trump
00:16:19.620supporters, but why don't Democrats see Biden as a liar when he's wall-to-wall lies all the time?
00:16:27.560And I think it has to do with whatever your brand is. You know, once you've decided that somebody is
00:16:34.360a brand, you just sort of stick with it. I'll give you an example. When I was a kid, it was considered
00:16:41.520a truism that Volkswagen Beetles were unusually reliable. It was something about them being built
00:16:48.480simply or whatever. But the thought was that they're very reliable, these VW bugs, more reliable
00:16:56.700than any other vehicle. But yet, when I would drive around town, if I saw a broken-down car by the side
00:17:05.040of the road, the percentage of times it was a Volkswagen Beetle was really, really high, to the
00:17:12.180point where you couldn't not notice it. There'd be like broken-down Volkswagen Beetles all over the
00:17:17.480place, far more than any other car I ever saw. And yet, and yet, the reputation was it was the most
00:17:24.900dependable car. There was no correlation between what you observed with your own eyes and what
00:17:32.520everybody believed to be true. I think that was one of the first times I thought that the world is a
00:17:37.840crazy place, because it was just so obviously not true that they were dependable. And it's so obviously
00:17:45.000true that Biden is a gigantic liar. But one of the things you're seeing a little bit less
00:17:51.600is that that's a reason for disliking Trump. Correct me if I'm wrong, and watch for this as we get closer
00:17:59.160to election. I'll bet you that between now and election day, the complaint that Trump is a liar
00:18:06.100will shrink. You'll still hear it. But the number of times they'll say it will be way less. And the
00:18:12.840reason is, now they have something to compare him to. When it was just Trump versus whatever your ideal
00:18:19.780idea, your ideal of a better candidate is, well, then it looks like Trump's a big liar, because he's
00:18:26.560being compared to your ideal, honest candidate that doesn't really exist. But as soon as you get a real
00:18:31.960one, you get a real candidate, it's Joe Biden, and you start counting up the lies, and it's 33 in 90
00:18:39.600minutes, 33 lies in 90 minutes. How can you possibly say to yourself, with any kind of, you know,
00:18:47.480intellectual integrity, how can you say, ah, I'm going to vote for Joe Biden, because I don't want a liar
00:18:54.420for a president. I feel like that reason for voting for Biden just went away, because he lies
00:19:02.500continuously. All right. Here's my take two days after the debate. When the debate is fresh, you have a
00:19:19.780certain set of feelings, because you can remember a lot of the details. So there will be things that
00:19:25.060feel like they're having an effect on you, because you remember them, they just happened, you're
00:19:30.640thinking about it, it must be important, because you're thinking about it. But you get just a few
00:19:35.620days away from it, and memories being what they are, you start forgetting slices of it. And you're
00:19:43.380forgetting this, and you're forgetting that, and you're forgetting that. Pretty soon, there's not much
00:19:49.040left of your memory. This is just normal way memories work. So what's left after a few days have
00:19:56.100gone by, and there's lots more political noise and distractions, and suddenly, here's the memory that
00:20:02.640you'll be left with from that debate. There was a contest to see who could bullshit the most,
00:20:10.020and Trump dominated it. That's it. That's sort of what you'll remember, because that was the visual,
00:20:17.460and it was sort of the overall theme and feeling you got. You can't forget how much Trump was trying
00:20:27.080to dominate and talk over Biden, and how Biden was, he was doing a pretty good job of trying to fight
00:20:33.220back. But it looked like a battle of bullies, because if you've ever watched Biden debate not
00:20:40.420Trump, if you've seen past Biden debates, he's pretty bullying. But when you put him on the stage
00:20:48.020with Trump, he's the lesser bully, and that's what you remember. So let me ask you this. Let's say you
00:20:53.980were totally put off by Trump's aggressive, you know, not following the rules performance. Totally put
00:21:02.520off by it. But separately, you have to make a decision about the following. One of those two
00:21:09.820people, Biden or Trump, is going to fight for something on your side. So you have to pick one
00:21:17.320of them to be on your team, to be a team leader. And once you pick them, they're going to go do some
00:21:21.820fighting for you. So whatever they can get, whatever deals they can make, whatever advantages
00:21:27.860they can get, that's going to accrue to you, because you picked them, they're on your team.
00:21:32.420If the only thing you knew about them was that debate, who do you pick to get you some shit?
00:21:41.120Right? You see it, right? You could hate everything about what Trump did on that stage. But if you said
00:21:50.160to yourself, you can only pick one of them, and they have to go forth and get you some stuff.
00:21:54.560It's a no-brainer. You're going to pick Trump every time, because he controlled the situation.
00:22:04.620Even if you hated it, that's the guy you want on your team. If you're hiring a lawyer,
00:22:11.000do you want the lawyer who's the most polite? No, you don't. You don't want the lawyer who's most
00:22:17.620polite. You might want the lawyer who's polite to you. But when your lawyer is fighting the other team,
00:22:23.960you don't want them to be nice, necessarily, I mean, unless there's some advantage to it. You want
00:22:29.740them to be a killer. You want them to be a shark. So I got a feeling that people were not as put off
00:22:37.600by the strongman performance, which is what it was. It was showing who had the most alpha energy.
00:22:46.020And on that point, I saw just a great comment. So this is from Frances Martel, who's a Breitbart
00:22:58.700International News Editor. And I'm assuming because she has some Spanish words in her profile
00:23:05.180that she's Hispanic, which is important to the point. And she tweeted this,
00:23:10.300My hottest take is that Hispanics like this debate, because this is how we engage each other
00:23:16.760politically all the time. It isn't uncivil. It's just passionate. The pearl clutching about how
00:23:23.320presidents aren't supposed to act like those people doesn't sit well with me. And apparently a number
00:23:29.880of other people, not apparently, I saw the comments. And there were a lot of people from various,
00:23:36.760let's say, interesting cultures who said, Oh, yeah, same here. Same here. That's that's like my
00:23:45.860family. And they looked at it and thought to themselves, Oh, yeah, that's that looks just
00:23:51.440like I would expect it to look. Why wouldn't it look like that? Of course, the president is
00:23:56.340aggressive. Of course, he's talking over him. Of course, he's interrupting. How else do you do it?
00:24:01.760That's exactly how a political conversation is supposed to look. Now, I don't have my own insight
00:24:09.700into this. But there were a whole lot of people who agreed with it. So that's all I'm going to say.
00:24:15.680You know, a lot of people agreed with it.
00:24:20.600I saw Dan Bongino's take on the debate. And I thought it was a really strong one. So I'll repeat
00:24:30.400it here, which is that it's a base election. In other words, nobody is trying to persuade somebody
00:24:37.420else to vote from the other team. So so everybody is just trying to get their own people to show up.
00:24:43.620And it's all about getting your own base to get off the couch or fill out the form and actually vote.
00:24:50.900So that's the first thing. And as Dan points out, strategically, did Trump make a dent in Biden's
00:25:02.640support by separating him from his far left? Well, I don't know, because a lot of those people are
00:25:09.820going to say, well, you know, I'm still closer to Biden than I am to Trump. I don't like Trump.
00:25:15.720So maybe. But what about the people who are sort of just not that excited about voting?
00:25:24.160Maybe they would have. Maybe they wouldn't run on the fence. It's not a case that they would have
00:25:29.140switched their vote to Trump, but rather they're just not going to show up and vote for Biden because
00:25:36.120they're just not as excited. Maybe they were Bernie supporters and they feel like they were thrown
00:25:40.640under the bus. So did the president make his point that the Biden supporters are not all on the same
00:25:49.200page? I feel like he did. As Dan Bongino pointed out, I think he made that case and he made it well.
00:25:57.620But what about the the problems that Trump gave himself by his, let's say, bad performance on the
00:26:05.340question of disavowing white supremacy? Do you think that cost him any votes from his base?
00:26:14.940And the answer is probably not, because there's nothing that happened in the debate that
00:26:21.540Trump's supporters are not accustomed to. In other words, it's sort of more of the same.
00:26:28.940Oh, OK, we we already know he doesn't like to be pushed into saying stuff.
00:26:32.880We already know he doesn't like to be into apologizing, clarifying defense. He just likes
00:26:39.740to play offense. And so that's what you get. Now, to his supporters, we've all seen the
00:26:47.720compilation clips of him clearly and and and strongly disavowing white supremacy and racists and the KKK.
00:26:56.360So if you're a supporter, you know that the claims against him are bullshit, even if you
00:27:02.820understand that the way he handled the question was completely botched, which would be my take on
00:27:08.180it. Now, my own take, he did lose my vote. I told you this yesterday. Personally, he lost my vote.
00:27:16.060But I also have never haven't voted lately. So it's not like it's any big difference.
00:27:20.680And and as I explained, losing my vote is just personal. It's just personal. It's not anything
00:27:29.200I would try to talk you into. I would not try to talk you into it. I just spent way too much of my
00:27:35.520own personal currency debunking that whole fine people hoax. I just wanted a little hand and I
00:27:42.740didn't get it. It took it personally. All right. So that's just me. You don't need to follow that
00:27:49.780model. I wouldn't encourage you to do it. So, yeah, the Bongino analysis, I feel is solid,
00:27:58.180pretty solid. I think the president might have done nothing to hurt his base and probably hurt
00:28:07.200Biden's base a little bit. That could matter. We'll see. The court packing question I thought
00:28:16.020was interesting. And by the way, if you recorded Tucker Carlson's show from last night,
00:28:23.380you got to watch that thing. You know, Tucker Carlson is probably one of the strongest opinion
00:28:30.180shows on TV. Not probably. It's one of the strongest opinion shows. Best quality, most interesting,
00:28:37.800you know, most creative takes on stuff, I would say. But last night's show was kind of a masterpiece.
00:28:45.140It was one of the best shows I think he's ever had. And one of the points he talked about was the
00:28:51.020importance of this court packing question that Joe Biden avoided. And I had not really thought it
00:28:58.560through as much as, you know, Tucker, you know, fleshed it out a little bit. And here's the thing
00:29:05.160that I was missing. The court packing question isn't just a little throwaway preference kind of a
00:29:13.660thing. It is the end of the republic. And that was not obvious to me at first. And here's how it's the
00:29:22.200end of the republic. If right now the republic depends on, you know, the equal branches having
00:29:30.880their own power, so that the judiciary is somewhat independent from Congress, from the president,
00:29:37.440so that they all have their individual powers. But what would happen if court packing became
00:29:43.440acceptable? Because the first time it happens won't be the last time. It means that whoever's in
00:29:49.680charge will just pack the court until there are 150 people in the court. But more likely,
00:29:56.180and this is the scary part, there's a very possible scenario that goes like this.
00:30:07.640Democrats win the presidency. Democrats win maybe even the Senate. And then Democrats pack the court.
00:30:17.420What happens if Democrats have the court, Congress, and the presidency at the same time?
00:30:26.740Well, under our current, you know, highly polarized situation, it would almost guarantee that they
00:30:35.900would modify the system until they couldn't lose ever again. In other words, it would be everything
00:30:42.300from jerry-rigging to changes in, you know, how many states there are in the union. They might accept,
00:30:52.040let's say, accept Puerto Rico and Guam, turn them into Democrat strongholds. No, I think it was not Guam,
00:30:59.400maybe it was D.C. So I think Puerto Rico and D.C. become states. They would both be Democratic states.
00:31:06.480Democrats would control everything. That's it. You could very easily reach the point where we're a
00:31:13.680one-party system, and we're this close to it. We're this close. All it would take was a good
00:31:20.940election cycle this time. That's it. And once you have only one party, they can use the court to lock
00:31:28.760themselves in because, you know, Republicans might try to challenge it and say, hey, you can't do this
00:31:34.680or that because it's illegal. And then the court says, well, we're a bunch of Democrats, and we always
00:31:41.100go Democrat. There it is. So we actually are this close to losing the republic. And the biggest part of
00:31:49.040that is probably the court packing, if the court packing is allowed. And Joe Biden is not saying no to
00:31:56.140it. He's actually open to it, apparently, because he's not saying no. So if that doesn't scare you,
00:32:03.860it should. And here's a frame that I think would be useful for the president.
00:32:10.300People like certainty more than they like improvement. This is a very important element of human
00:32:19.460psychology. If you say, would you like something to be better? Everybody says yes. Well, of course,
00:32:25.540I like improvement. But if you said, would you like improvement at the risk that there could be,
00:32:33.460you know, it might go wrong? Well, then it's different. Then I'll say, depends where I am in
00:32:40.060life and what's going on. Maybe I'll just be happy with where things are because the risk of trying to
00:32:46.060improve it could blow the whole thing. Biden is the risky play. Here's why. You don't know what
00:32:53.780you'll get. If you reelect President Trump, do you know what you'll get? Yes, you do. You totally know
00:33:03.660what you'll get with President Trump. Because first of all, he has a very strong record of doing what he
00:33:09.160told you he would do, or at least trying to do what he said he would do. That's kind of unique about
00:33:16.000Trump. Is that you can really bank on what you expect him to at least try to do, right? He's going
00:33:25.000to go hard at China. He's going to try to build a border wall. He's going to keep taxes low. Pretty
00:33:32.180much everything about Trump, you kind of can predict. Will he continue to do things which his
00:33:38.940critics will call racist? Of course. Will they actually be racist? Probably not. Probably not.
00:33:48.300But you'll be accused of it, of course. So a second Trump term would look a whole lot like you expect
00:33:56.440it would look. What would a Biden term look like? Number one, who's the president? You don't even know
00:34:05.080who the president is. Number two, who's running Biden? Who's the power behind Biden? I'm not so
00:34:11.680sure. If you get Biden, how much of the Green New Deal do you end up with, even if his intention is to
00:34:18.820stick with the Biden Green Deal? You don't know. Because you don't know how powerful that wing of the
00:34:25.600party will be. A Biden presidency is a complete unknown. You don't even know if you'll still have
00:34:32.620a republic. Literally, you don't know if the republic would survive it, because packing the court is
00:34:40.780sort of the end of the republic. That turns it into a, or could turn it into a one-party system.
00:34:49.460So uncertainty is a big deal. There's continuing information about new testing stuff for coronavirus.
00:35:01.220So I don't know too much about this. It was just a tweet today. Sheba Medical Center in Israel, I guess,
00:35:08.500is testing a new antigen coronavirus test that could give you a result in two to 15 minutes.
00:35:14.780So, and they're working on a, I guess they're working on a saliva-based test. So we're very close
00:35:21.320to the super cheap saliva test, meaning that you can do it yourself. You don't need anybody to stick
00:35:27.900anything up your nose. And I don't know how many different test companies are working on it,
00:35:34.000but I'm guessing that the technology involved to make a saliva-based, cheap, no-equipment-needed
00:35:43.060coronavirus test is understood. Because there are enough different entities working on it. It must be
00:35:49.900something that people who deal in this field must know how to do. So we might be like a month away
00:35:57.900from having massive amount of inexpensive testing, and then it's going to look good. So that's some
00:36:05.680good news. There's a study out of India that could be really important. It says that 8% of infected
00:36:14.860people accounted for 60% of new infections. So these would be the so-called super spreaders.
00:36:22.360So the super spreaders, if you could somehow identify who was a super spreader, and you only
00:36:30.700could take care of them and nothing else, that might take care of it. Because it's such an outsized
00:36:39.000difference. And here's a question I have. Could you identify the super spreaders by their genes?
00:36:48.540Is there a genetic DNA kind of correlation? Because suppose it turns out that in order to be a super
00:36:57.340spreader, you would have to have, I don't know, some kind of lung situation or maybe a blood type.
00:37:04.880I'm just, you know, spitballing here. There might be something about you that makes you more likely to
00:37:11.900be a super spreader. Now it's possible that all that is, is you have a big lung capacity or you speak
00:37:18.040loud. Maybe that's all it is. So maybe you couldn't find that in genetics. But what if you could?
00:37:26.040What if you could actually find out that some people, even if they don't have the infection,
00:37:31.800infection, if they did get the infection, they're the type of person who would become a super spreader?
00:37:38.080That would be useful, wouldn't it? Because you could say to yourself, we don't have a ton of tests,
00:37:44.160but let's make sure that the people who have a DNA propensity to be a super spreader,
00:37:50.020let's make sure we test the crap out of those guys. Just test them every day,
00:37:55.520you know, until we have enough tests to do everybody all the time.
00:37:58.560So that's just a question. Here's a take that you won't see from people who have
00:38:07.340better instincts for survival than I do. One of the benefits of these periscopes is that
00:38:16.520I can say things that people don't say out loud. You ready? Here's something that somebody doesn't
00:38:23.160say out loud too much for all the obvious reasons. How many children, let's say how many 10-year-old
00:38:30.740children would you trade for how many 80-year-olds? Let's say you knew that the coronavirus was going
00:38:43.200to take, let's say, five years off the age of a senior citizen, if they get it. But if the 10-year-old
00:38:51.280can't go to school, can't live their regular life, you know, everything's shut down, what if they kill
00:38:58.980themselves? Worst case scenario, right? Kid does themselves harm. Well, if a 10-year-old,
00:39:06.380their life is ruined by the coronavirus in any way that causes a death, the number of years of life
00:39:13.940that that 10-year-old had might be 80. So if a 10-year-old were to perish, they would lose 80 years
00:39:21.200of life. If an 80-year-old dies, maybe they lose five years of life. So if you lost 16 80-year-olds,
00:39:32.140it would be the same number of years of life as one kid. One kid would be the same number of years
00:39:39.220of life as 16 80-year-olds. These, yeah, I'm just making up these numbers, but it's somewhere in that
00:39:45.640range. Now, in public, you're supposed to say this, every life is precious. We don't value one life over
00:39:55.140another. We don't treat anybody as expendable. And I agree with all of that. That's what you say in
00:40:03.660public. What do you say in private? In private, you don't say that. There are things that you say
00:40:10.480in public, and you should. Every life is equal. Everyone is respected. You're going to fight like
00:40:17.760hell for every single life. That's what you say in public, and you should. But it's not what you think.
00:40:24.180You don't think that privately. Privately, you know that the life of a child is just worth more than
00:40:31.780the life of somebody who's 80. It's just a fact. And if you ask the 80-year-old, well, what do you
00:40:37.420think? What do you think, 80-year-old? Do you think we should put you at a little more risk to save the
00:40:43.500life of a kid, or at least give them a life that's worth living? The 80-year-old, most of them would say,
00:40:49.600you know, maybe so. Maybe so. You know, I had a good run. So here's where I'm going with this.
00:40:57.620I think Trump's instincts about opening the economy, which benefits the young at the expense
00:41:06.280of the old, right? Opening the economy benefits the young and gives them something like a life,
00:41:13.580something like a better education, you know, which affects their whole life. And maybe they don't,
00:41:19.980you know, die from depression and suicide and drug addiction and all that other stuff.
00:41:24.340I think the president is doing in public what every one of us thinks in private.
00:41:32.920And that's one of the reasons he got elected, because he can say in public the things that
00:41:38.140you can only say in private, and he's willing to do it. And I think that the president is very
00:41:45.700close to the public in terms of the trade-off of the economy versus lives. Have you had any
00:41:53.160conversation in your private life? Somebody says, my mom is 86. Her life is not expendable. Did I
00:42:01.740disagree with that? Did I disagree with that? In public, every life is precious. But the reality is
00:42:10.860sometimes you have to choose. And these choices are adult choices. It's not like you get to choose,
00:42:17.880why don't we let them both live and have wonderful lives. Sometimes you don't have that choice.
00:42:23.500Sometimes you just got to make a choice. And I think that the president's, his bias toward the young
00:42:30.860is exactly where the public is. And I think that when I hear 200x thousand Americans died of coronavirus,
00:42:40.780I still don't know one. Let me ask you here, how many of you have somebody close who died from
00:42:52.600coronavirus? Because I wonder how deeply it's getting into the everyday public, the fact that
00:43:00.180I've never met one. I don't know anybody, actually zero people that I know personally. I know people
00:43:06.520who know people, but I don't actually still know anybody personally. So in the comments,
00:43:11.460tell me if you know anybody who's died of coronavirus. And let's say that you did.
00:43:18.260Let's say you did know somebody who wasn't a family member because you're way too biased about
00:43:23.160family members. But let's say you knew an acquaintance who was 80 years old and died of the coronavirus,
00:43:32.340virus. But the trade-off was that the economy got opened. Children could go to school. People
00:43:38.520could live something closer to a real life. What do you think about that? If you had to make that
00:43:46.420choice, which way would you go? Somebody says in the comments, I choose my kids over my mom.
00:43:56.260Yup. Because you would choose your kids over yourself. Yeah, you would choose your kids over your mom.
00:44:02.060That's absolutely true. And I have a feeling that the public is way closer to Trump in terms of
00:44:11.660taking the risk of opening the economy. And also the risks about wearing masks and all that.
00:44:18.420So here's the thing that the illegitimate media doesn't ever do. They don't really look at the
00:44:25.180costs and the benefits. They just like to look at the costs, or they just like to look at the benefits.
00:44:30.660They don't weigh them. And they certainly don't say, is there any difference between what you say in
00:44:37.160public and what you say in private? So I'm seeing lots of no's in the comments. One says, my 80-year-old
00:44:45.220aunt. Governor Dan Patrick said he would risk dying to keep a strong economy for his grandkids.
00:44:53.680You know, a lot of the people in their 80s, isn't that the greatest generation? The people who fought in
00:45:00.180World War II, etc. Oh, somebody's 92-year-old mom had COVID and recovered. Good for her.